The mayor of Detroit said on Sunday it was too early to discuss a potential federal bailout for the city, but suggested that the White House had offered "great support" following its bankruptcy filing.

The city – which was once home to the US auto industry – became the largest municipality to apply for Chapter 9 bankruptcy last week, after failing to secure a deal between creditors and pension funds. Speaking on ABC's This Week, Mayor David Bing warned that his city may not be the only one to file for bankruptcy – a move that has been countered by a Michigan circuit judge, who ruled Friday that it violated the state's constitution.

"We're not the only city that's going to struggle through what we're going through" he said. "There are over a hundred urban cities that are having the same problem's we're having. We may be the one of the first, we are the largest, but we absolutely will not be the last."

Detroit's financial woes follow years of decline and depopulation. With close to 80,000 abandoned buildings in the city, and unemployment at its highest level for 40 years, it is feared that bankruptcy may lead to further short-term hardship for Detroit's poor.

The White House has said it is monitoring the situation and on Friday the vice-president, Joe Biden, said "We don't know yet" when he was asked how the administration intends to help fix the city's broken finances. Speaking on Sunday, Bing indicated that initial talks with White House officials had been constructive. "I have gotten great support from this administration," he told ABC, adding: "There's a lot of conversation, a lot of planning a lot of negotiations that will go into fixing our city."

Asked directly if this meant there would be no federal bailout, the mayor said: "Not yet".